I mentioned in a previous post that my Hootoo Pan and Tilt IP Camera on-board firmware has an option that will dump pictures to an FTP folder when motion is detected, but that it dumps way too many pictures and inundates the FTP folder, thereby crippling Windows where it takes significant time to even load the directory contents. The Hootoo firmware provides an interval user input but not a duration, and I haven't been able to figure out what the default duration is, in either minutes or number of image captures. I updated the firmware hoping that it would have an improved (shorter) motion detection snapshot duration, or better yet, a user input variable for duration, but it did not. There are so many captures that it makes finding any motion captures very cumbersome and time consuming. So usually, I just go to delete the images, since there was no cause to investigate them. For purging the directory, without crashing windows explorer, I wrote this batch script which I can execute from my desktop.
In the past I have used Yawcam with hard-wired USB cameras. Yawcam is a good solution for a single USB camera and it does work with wireless IP cameras over the network as well. It was a great performer when I used it for security motion detection. However, it is a PC based solution instead of a on-board camera solution. In order to use it you need a PC to run it, but that is OK since I have an "always-on" PC server, but not everyone may have this available.
Yawcam also offers some additional features like region inclusion/exclusion for motion detection. However, since it is an external monitoring software, it will not exclude motion from panning and tilting like the on-board software will, so any panning and tilting will be interpreted as motion, but since I keep this particular camera primarily stationary, I think it will be much better than the on-board solution given all of its drawbacks.
The other issue is that Yawcam (at least the version I have) only supports one camera. So, I am putting it only on the main house camera and will either disable motion detection or will periodically purge the directory. There are some sites that show you how to setup two instances of Yawcam, but it causes some issues with the kernel regarding licensing which I didn't really want to deal with.
The next thing I might be interested in is adding some event triggers like doorbell rings or something that would correlate to the motion detection images.
del C:\ftpdirectory\camera1folder\* /Q
del C:\ftpdirectory\camera2folder\* /Q
In the past I have used Yawcam with hard-wired USB cameras. Yawcam is a good solution for a single USB camera and it does work with wireless IP cameras over the network as well. It was a great performer when I used it for security motion detection. However, it is a PC based solution instead of a on-board camera solution. In order to use it you need a PC to run it, but that is OK since I have an "always-on" PC server, but not everyone may have this available.
Yawcam also offers some additional features like region inclusion/exclusion for motion detection. However, since it is an external monitoring software, it will not exclude motion from panning and tilting like the on-board software will, so any panning and tilting will be interpreted as motion, but since I keep this particular camera primarily stationary, I think it will be much better than the on-board solution given all of its drawbacks.
The other issue is that Yawcam (at least the version I have) only supports one camera. So, I am putting it only on the main house camera and will either disable motion detection or will periodically purge the directory. There are some sites that show you how to setup two instances of Yawcam, but it causes some issues with the kernel regarding licensing which I didn't really want to deal with.
The next thing I might be interested in is adding some event triggers like doorbell rings or something that would correlate to the motion detection images.
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